In his Kremlin defense of Russia's annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin, even before he began listing the battles where Russian blood had been shed on Crimean soil, spoke of an older deeper bond.

Crimea, said Putin, "is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus."

Russia is a Christian country, Putin was saying.

This speech recalls last December's address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:

"Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation."

With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.

In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God's side. The West is Gomorrah.

Western leaders who compare Putin's annexation of Crimea to Hitler's Anschluss with Austria, who dismiss him as a "KGB thug," who call him "the alleged thief, liar and murderer who rules Russia," as the Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins did, believe Putin's claim to stand on higher moral ground is beyond blasphemous.

But Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he is doing, and his new claim has a venerable lineage. The ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers who exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, was, at the time of his death in 1964, writing a book on "The Third Rome."

The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today's Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was  Moscow.

Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.

Putin is plugging into some of the modern world's most powerful currents.

Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America's arrogant drive for global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR disintegrated.

He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.

In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia's flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a "culture of death."

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes that she was stunned when in Tbilisi to hear a Georgian lawyer declare of the former pro-Western regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, "They were LGBT."

"It was an eye-opening moment," wrote Applebaum. Fear and loathing of the same-sex-marriage pandemic has gone global. In Paris, a million-man Moral Majority marched in angry protest.

Author Martha Gessen, who has written a book on Putin, says of his last two years, "Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world."

But the war to be waged with the West is not with rockets. It is a cultural, social, moral war where Russia's role, in Putin's words, is to "prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state."

Would that be the "chaotic darkness" and "primitive state" of mankind, before the Light came into the world?

This writer was startled to read in the Jan-Feb. newsletter from the social conservative World Council of Families in Rockford, Ill., that, of the "ten best trends" in the world in 2013, number one was "Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader."

In 2013, the Kremlin imposed a ban on homosexual propaganda, a ban on abortion advertising, a ban on abortions after 12 weeks and a ban on sacrilegious insults to religious believers.

"While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view," writes WCF's Allan Carlson, "Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values. During the Soviet era, Western communists flocked to Moscow. This year, World Congress of Families VII will be held in Moscow, Sept. 10-12."

March 1997 45-year-old former KGB agent Vladimir Putin (pictured, left) is plucked from obscurity out of the St. Petersburg local government apparatus by President Boris Yeltsin and named Deputy Chief of Staff. List of journalists killed in Russia

“If you think that Russia has become a friend of ours, think again. Lets not spend all our money on welfare and global warming. The recent election of Russias new patriarch shows that we still need to defend ourselves against the Kremlins imperial dreams.

Since ancient times the Kremlin has used religion to manipulate people. The tsars employed the Church to instill domestic obedience. The Soviet rulers kept the population quiet through the KGB, but they dreamed about world revolution. After the home front had calmed down, they charged the KGB to work through the church to help the Kremlin expand its influence into Latin America and beyondsince Peter the Great, Russian tsars have been obsessed with finding a way to break into the New World.

Creating a secret intelligence army of religious servants and using it to promote the Kremlins interests abroad was an important task the KGB community had during the 27 years I belonged to it. Thousands of uncooperative religious servants were killed or sent to gulags. The compliant ones were used. Since priests were not allowed to become KGB officers, they assumed the position of cooptee or deepcover officer. A cooptee received perks from the KGB (promotions, trips abroad, foreign cigarettes, foreign beverages, etc). A deepcover officer enjoyed the same perks, plus a secret supplementary salary according to his real or imaginary KGB rank. To preserve their secrecy, all priests who became cooptees or deepcover officers were known inside the KGB only by their code names.

Recent revelations show that the KGB continues along the same religious crusade as before, although it has meanwhile been discreetly renamed the FSB[1] to promote the idea that the criminal Soviet political police, which killed over 20 million people, has been dispersed to the winds of change.

The old paradigm of Russian leader equals bad, USA President equals (basically) good is long dead. Probably died with Reagan but we didn’t notice at the time. Currently there are a few blocks of power vying for influence around the world - the EU, Russia, China and the US as well as the constantly undermining factor of the UN and the destructive force of Islam. It used to be that you could count on the US and European Nations to be the good guys - no longer and I am not sure that if that would change with a change of leadership in the US. They all seem hell bent in going the same way despite the protestations of most of their inhabitants. They are all anti-Christian and anti-Israel. It seems that fulfillment of the Prophetic Christian texts seems inevitable - it may be just a matter of when!

God may be looking at the modern world and saying that He doesn’t really have a dog in the hunt any more. The four main forces in the world are different shades of ungodly — the largely atheist and politically correct west, the demonic creations of Islam, the sinister unrenounced communism of Putin, and the non-spiritual monolith of China.

There may be a few smaller countries that resonate better with God’s true identity and purpose, and a remnant of the faithful in the west and in Israel.

As to Putin claiming the moral high ground, I suspect that much of this is for strategic purposes and not a deeply felt personal set of values at all. If it advanced his agenda to embrace the rainbow and start sending Christians to the gulag, he would no doubt turn that way. The only god that Putin serves is Putin.

God does not bless the unrepentant. Whatever Putin is up to, he must, first, repent.

Our nation has lost God's blessings and the USA can't muster up enough moral conviction to even begin to slow this slide we're on into pure and unadulterated evil.

We, as a nation, have no moral high ground to stand on, when it comes to comparing ourselves to other powers in the world.

It is disgusting that the only counter influence we can seem to gather around in any magnitude is atheistic secularist in form, being the complaint against the populace being “taxed enough already.” How pathetic is that? Especially pathetic, when we have the evils of abortion, euthanasia, assisted-suicide, healthcare rationing, anti-Judeo-Christinity and anti-family policies already in practice in our official national policies. Yet, our biggest complaint is taxes...how telling.

To pretend we're any better, in God's eyes, than Russia, is sheer delusion.

I’m not ready to jump on the Putin bandwagon but I can see why a lot of people would be. All of the things he is talking about, duty, honor, country, Christian values, etc., are things that America used to stand proudly for — and now, no longer does.

Americans may. Free Republic is a bastion of those values, and there are others, but the sad fact of life is that morally degenerate heathens have taken over the leadership of the nation and we no longer have any moral standing in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

To be a traditional ally of the US is putting yourself in the position of being ostracized by the rest of the world community while being buggered by Uncle Sam. There’s no upside.

When Putin talks about all the things that used to be American watchwords, it does absolutely no good to jump up and down screaming “He doesn’t mean it!” The fact of the matter is, he’s saying things that nobody else is willing to say and he’s making himself and his agenda of sanity in a large country, where the rest of the world seems bent on suicidal hedonism. People are taking notice.

If America wants to regain the leadership position it earned in the past, it’s going to have to return the the moral values that went with it. That’s obvious. Until it does, it has no right to bitch when others look for leadership elsewhere.

21
posted on 04/04/2014 3:11:49 AM PDT
by Ronin
(Dumb, dependent and Democrat is no way to go through life - Rep. L. Gohmert, Tex)

Napoleon also jailed the Pope, and when he was warned that this was not wise, quipped: What will God do about it? Make my soldiers drop their weapons and flee? A few years later, they did that when they fled from Moscow...

As to Putin claiming the moral high ground, I suspect that much of this is for strategic purposes and not a deeply felt personal set of values at all. If it advanced his agenda to embrace the rainbow and start sending Christians to the gulag, he would no doubt turn that way. The only god that Putin serves is Putin.

Eyewitnesses and volunteers helping homeless children in Crimea said that invading Russian troops moved into orphanages.

When the Jews turned their back on Him and he eventually sold them into captivity, Babylon: a pagan nation God decided to use their Kings as his own personal puppets. There were very evil kings sometimes doing good and I think they had no idea why.

I don’t believe Putin is good or, the chi-coms, or the EU, and not even the US. We have turned our back just as the Israelites did, and worshiped false Gods of gold and silver and wood and stone and built alters and sacrificed children in the fire. We deserve judgement as much as anyone, unless we repent. But who knows, God may use wicked men to bring about his wrath on evil in order to bring about good.

Maybe Putin will cure the world of it’s Muslim problem? Maybe Muslims will cure the US of its Washington DC problem?
Maybe the Chinese will cure Europe of its Godlessness?

No one knows what will happen, but one thing is certain, the wicked will be punished.

Another garbage promoting “Obama is a clown, so let's support the enemy” sick approach. Both are nothing good but Obama is a scout boy unable to implement any of his strategies, in charge of a civilized nation, while Putin is a professionally trained KGB butcher in charge of a totalitarian horde. His “Christianity” is worth as much as “Gott mit uns” of Gerries during WW2.

More anti-American/pro-Russian drivel from Puchanan. This traitor belongs on the first plane or boat to Russia. He doesn’t deserve American citizenship.

I would rather live in a country with legalized homosexual marriage and abortion but also with free speech and the right to bear arms than in a dictatorship where the people are unable to change their government. Americans still have freedom even if some of us have lost our way. Russian serfs have their chains.

well, Moscow was founded in the 12th century as an outpost of Vladimir-Suzdal, which was a Kievan Rus city, so the inhabitants would have been descended from those who accepted Christianity in the 10th century

39
posted on 04/04/2014 3:59:36 PM PDT
by Cronos
(Obamas dislike of Assad is not based on Assads brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)

Modern-day Russian "dupes"Pat Buchanan's column "Is God Now on Russia's Side?" is difficult to read and almost laugh-out-loud funny, as Buchanan was once a staunch anti-communist who served President Reagan as his communications director during the Cold War. Buchanan's opposition to the Evil Empire, as Reagan correctly called it, has given way to an unseemly embrace of former Soviet KGB colonel Vladimir Putin, the virtual dictator of Russia who served the "Evil Empire" for decades. Once a sharp thinker, Buchanan argues that Putin is a Christian and Russia is now a Christian nation. We are apparently supposed to ignore, or forgive, Putin's violations of human rights, including murders of journalists, and the invasion of Ukraine.

Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2010 Few people are better placed than Mr. Soldatov and Ms. Borogan to write with authority on this subject. They run the website Agentura.Ru, a magpie's nest of news and analysis that presents a well-informed view of the inner workings of this secret state. Given the fates that have befallen other investigative journalists in Russia in recent years, some might fear for the authors' safety. But the publication of the "The New Nobility" in English is welcome; it should be essential reading for those who hold naïve hopes about Russia's development or who pooh-pooh the fears of its neighbors.

Only 95%? That's surprising. Usually totalitarian regimes get 100% turnout. The Crimean news editor didn't support the referendum, but was persuaded after being throat punched by some Russian goons. Amazing how a little bodily harm can change a person's mind.

>>>Only 95%? That’s surprising. Usually totalitarian regimes get 100% turnout. The Crimean news editor didn’t support the referendum, but was persuaded after being throat punched by some Russian goons.<<<

I think one can get a general idea of whether a nation is on the right track by whether that nation is being blessed. The USA was formerly blessed by being rich and prosperous, and that’s directly attributable to the obedience we showed to God in our laws. Whatever He condemned, we shamed and made illegal.

But no more. We’re in full-on rebellion, and our rich and and prosperous nation is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, at least $17 trillion in debt.

So the USA’s blessings have been removed, and we’re sinking in the filth of depravity further every day. Time will tell whether Russia is being blessed by God for their obedience. My guess is, they will. Even if it’s only lip service by the elite, if they’re actually being obedient, I think those blessings will flow.

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